Astro-illogical signs: don’t turn left today

Horoscopes an innacurate guide to living your life

If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say “hey baby, what’s your sign,” either on TV or in real life, I would not have go to school for a career to pay for the rest of my life.

That might be an exaggeration, but people still put value in astrological signs.

I don’t think I can even count the times when I was younger that I snuck a read into Cosmopolitan just to see what kind of fortune I was going to have just because my birthday makes me a Leo.

I’m not going to say that I don’t put any value into the stars and constellations seeing as the idea has been around for so long, but how much can someone invest in the commercialized psychic properties of them today? As far as I’m concerned, Cosmo probably couldn’t have saved me from all of my crappy failed relationships while teaching me what color of nail polish I should match with my eyeshadow.

If you caught my article on New Year’s resolutions in the February issue, there’s a common trend between the beginning of resolutions and horoscopes – they both started in ancient Mesopotamia. The Smithsonian’s website published an article by Linda Rodriquez McRobbie in January 2016 that looked at how horoscopes actually claimed their place in today’s society.

Horoscope popularity began with R.H. Naylor, an astrologer in the early 20th century, who made predictions about Princess Margaret. Between Naylor’s predictions and “expert astrologer” Madame Humphrey’s predictions about former President Theodore Roosevelt, horoscopes became a household name. After Naylor’s predictions about the princess, he accurately predicted a British aircraft that crashed outside of Paris, and thus begins everyone’s obsession.

The problem following all of this is as the popularity grew the accuracy shrank. The growing consumerism of horoscopes caused them to become more generic as time passed.

With mass-production, there is a much greater margin of error. Unfortunately, that means a horoscope might end up saying that you should not go outside while wearing one shoe from one pair, and another shoe from a different pair, while also holding an upside down umbrella because one person that shares your sign in China is going to have bad luck three weeks from now.

Just for my personal amusement, whenever pages pop up on Facebook that tell the reader what the creepiest thing is about their sign, the homicidal tendency, or the sign they would be happiest in a relationship with, I read them.

Guilty pleasure, perhaps? Every once in a while, they hit the nail on the head. For instance, on April 3, I opened one about what Leo women are like in a relationship.

“A woman with a sword for a tongue, the Leo doesn’t take no for an answer. With a tendency to be harsh and straightforward, you can believe they need a strong man for a partner.”

If you’ve never actually spoken to me, you wouldn’t know this, but most that encounter me would probably agree with this statement.

On the other hand, I looked into different horoscopes on the Cosmo website. This is where I know that accuracy is not an actual thing in today’s astrology – Taurus should eat pumpkin cinnamon rolls as a fall comfort food. He would rather die than eat pumpkin flavored anything. That’s my lane.

In the spirit of proving that horoscopes are not an accurate guide to living your life – Kylie Jenner is also a Leo. Her lifestyle alone proves that I, as a Leo, am not going to have the same life or luck as she is.

The moral of this story is simple – if you want to find out what the stars have in store for you, pick up a book or take a class, that will teach you how to read the stars yourself. Just because Cosmo got it right one time, does not mean that the luckless Sagittarius from down the hall is going to have the exact same day as you every time.